Step by Step

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Yog I.C. on the Chief Nuisance of Fame and the Development of The Land

The first in a series of contemplations by the renowned thinker Yog I.C. on life.

Fame has its difficulties; not the least of all on one's gastric sensibilities. For the better part of two decades (till that red-letter day in the forests of Gir when Ms. Lopez-Garcia-Samuelson-Ramirez-Mishra, taken by my Being, took it upon herself to bring the world to my doorstep),I had survived happily on the simple diet of nuts (for the full details of my highly acclaimed weight-loss diet, pls refer the book 'Nuts for the Nuts' authored by my devotee Sri Sri Sai Sri Sai Sri who has recently abridged his name to Sri Sai Sri Sai Sri on the basis of numerological calculations).

In the words of my Chinese master, Sun-Lau -
"When fame comes knocking
Stomach; Be ready for a stocking"

In my youth, I was lax and paid no heed to these words, taking them at face. But it is clear now that what my master must have meant was
"When fame comse knocking
Stomach; Be ready for a socking".

As a man not entirely comfortable with the intricacies of the English language, Sun-Lau was prone to mixing up his footwear terminology in such manner.

So it must be understood that I was not quite ready for the flood of culinary delights that were to come my way in the months following the publication of my best-selling tome on the benefits of asceticism to one's respiratory system - "A Breath of Strife". The inevitable followed - countless, endless interviews with the journalists, appearances on the morning chat shows, photoshoots for the girlie magazines - and with it, my diet became severely stressed. It is not everywhere that one is likely to find the kind of nuts that one is accustomed to in the forests. And so I sacrificed my sromach to the altar. To put it more bluntly, neither paneer-bhurji-a-la-Kashmir at the Governor's house nor the Thai platter at the Star Club had a soothing effect on my bowels.

Many things have changed in the cities of this great land since I ventured into the forests over two decades ago - cricket and sex are now literally everywhere, sometimes (on television) together, and the seedy bars I used to frequent in my days of solitude are now offering a much wider range of alcoholic beverages and even imported brands of cigarettes. Sometimes I fear that all of this - modernization, globalization, capitalization (or was it capitalism?) - has gone a step too far. Twenty years ago, I went into the forests to find peace and enlightenment in nature.
Now, what with National Geographic and Discovery bringing nature into one's living room, and the concurrent increase in the levels of hedonistic pleasure available in the cities, I wonder if an enterprising young man (such as I decades ago) would be able to tear himself away from this life. What a loss to the world if this implies that we can have no more of the type of acclaimed ode to agriculture authored by my disciple Sai Sri Sri Sai Sri, brother of Sri Sai Sri Sai Sri, titled "A Call to Farms".

Anyhow, reader, take heart. For as Sun-Lau remarked upon getting his first credit card,
"Change is only a problem for those stuck in the world of cash transaction."